The Sonate auf Concertenart: A Postmodern Invention? David ...

Sonate auf Concertenart, p. 31
compositional devices currently associated with concerto movements in ritornello form may in
fact have a more general significance. For example, it has become fashionable to understand the
so-called Vivaldian ritornello as a tripartite structure comprised of Vordersatz, Fortspinnung, and
Epilog. This is to assign such ritornellos to Wilhelm Fischer's Fortspinnungtypus, one of two
basic categories of phrase structure which Fischer discerned in eighteenth-century instrumental
95 music. Many Italianate ritornellos, however, are comprised simply of antecedent and
96
consequent, the latter incorporating both "Fortspinnung" and "Epilog." This is particularly clear
where the "Epilog" is a brief cadential formula and not a distinct phrase. 97
This casts into doubt the idea that an "ideal ritornello" belonging to Fischer's
Fortspinnungstypus lies at the root of many late-Baroque movements whose actual ritornellos
take alternate forms. Among these is the vivace of Bach's G-minor gamba sonata BWV 1029, of
which it has been asserted that "conventional Bachian features include an ideal ritornello that
98
appears nowhere in the movement intact." The concept resembles the Schenkerian Ursatz in
being a normative structure that is posited as underlying actual music; as such it is less a verifiable
claim about Bach's compositional process (or his "conventions") than an argument for hearing
Bach's ritornellos as elaborations or variations of the scheme represented by Fischer's
Fortspinnungstypus. Not all ritornellos follow that scheme, however. The opening ritornello in the
first movement of the Second Brandenburg Concerto is more readily analyzed as an instance of
Fischer's Liedtypus--the alternative model comprised essentially of antecedent and consequent. To
be sure, the subsequent expansion of this ritornello in the course of the movement includes the
interpolation of the same sequential Fortspinnung already present in the opening ritornellos in
other works.
In any case, the Fortspinnungstypus has no special connection with the concerto
ritornello. As Fischer's original article made clear, much the same type of tripartite structure can
be found in sonata movements and other late-Baroque instrumental works. Indeed, Zehnder uses
99
Fischer's principle as a model for analyzing concerto episodes. In short, the three parts of the
Fortspinnungstypus are not limited to ritornello segments in concerto movements. As Fischer
argued, they are fundamental elements of eighteenth-century formal design, even if few today
would follow him in relating the Classical sonata-allegro directly to a ternary type of Baroque
95
Fischer's terminology, part of a general theory of eighteenth-century form, appears in his
"Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Wiener klassischen Stils," Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 3
(1915): 24-84; Dreyfus adopted it for the analysis of concertos in "J. S. Bach's Concerto
Ritornellos and the Question of Invention," Musical Quarterly 71 (1985): 327-58, subsequently
incorporated (in part) into Bach and the Patterns, 59-102.
96
97
98
99
See Gregory G. Butler, "J. S. Bach's Reception," 22n.12.
As in the ritornello from Vivaldi's Suonata RV 779 (see Swack, "On the Origins," 377).
Dreyfus, Bach and the Patterns, 109.
Zehnder, "Giuseppe Torelli und Johann Sebastian Bach," 41.